The present invention relates to fasteners, and more particularly, to a tension fed fastener installation tool and a related method of use.
There are a variety of fasteners, such as screws, that are used widely to fasten objects together or attach one object to the other. Cordless or electric installation tools are frequently used to drive screws to save time and increase work efficiency. Many installation tools, such as screw guns, use collated screws to further increase the work efficiency. In use, most screw guns operate to feed a flexible collated strip of screws from the bottom of the tool toward the nose of the tool, where the individual screws are separated from the collated plastic strip and driven into a substrate or object.
Most conventional screw guns include a special pusher feeder. The strip of screws is fed through the gun via the pusher feeder, which engages notches in the sides of the collated strip with one or more teeth. The teeth are advanced by some action of a user, for example, via the user pushing the tool toward the substrate or object, so that the teeth engage a few select side notches, and push the collated strip toward the nose of the tool for driving.
While conventional screw guns with this type of pusher feeder work, they suffer a variety of shortcomings. First, the pusher feeder many times requires a complicated mechanism to actuate the teeth with some sort of motion imparted on the tool by the user. This mechanism may utilize a separate drive that rotates a toothed gear to push the strip when the user initially pushes down on the tool. Second, in some cases, the forward push of the strip toward the nose must be perfectly timed, or the pusher feeder may create a jam or a misfeed of the strip. In turn, to fix the jam, the user typically disassembles the nose piece, which can be time consuming and frustrating. Third, the flexible screw strips can be difficult to manage, and at times it is difficult to prevent the screws on the flexible strip from bunching or tangling as the strip is pushed toward the nose piece for a driving sequence.
Accordingly, there remains room for improvement to provide an installation tool and related method for fasteners in a collated strip, where the collated strip is fed more efficiently and is less prone to jamming, misfeeds, bunching and/or tangling.